Cliffhanger
by SnickieFics
Summary: Jeremie has come up with a totally cool new way to keep Aelita somewhat safe from the digital sea. But when XANA attacks, will it be enough to save her? June Story challenge at Xana's Lair and won 2nd place, yay! May or may not continue. I decided to make it its own story instead of lumping it all together with other challenges.


**A|N: **I joined XANA's Lair just two days ago. I decided I wanted to participate in story challenge of the month for June in hopes that it would revive my muse enough for me to be able to work on my bigger Code Lyoko fanfiction project and maybe even get the first chapter up.

Code Lyoko is property of...oh I don't know. It sure isn't me, anyway.

I don't own Sparknotes, either.

June Story Challenge: Cliffhanger

**SHE HAD ONE**

"...And with this protective surface layer Aelita and I programmed, you guys are no longer in immediate danger of instant permanent devirtualization should you fall into the digital sea."

"You're a real genius, Einstein," Odd grinned.

"Yeah! With William always trying to throw Aelita into the digital sea now, we at least now know she'll be okay for a while if he succeeds," Ulrich added.

The four ninth-grade Lyoko warriors were standing around in the school courtyard, isolated enough to be able to talk freely, but still close enough to other groups so as not to look suspicious. Yumi was off taking a history test. Jeremie and Aelita looked tired: clearly they'd been programming all night, but Aelita had taken to drinking coffee on those nights, so she was a little bit better able to stay awake in morning classes. Jeremie's energy today came from knowing he had just programmed something completely genius and his eagerness to share it with his friends.

"And the nice thing about it is that even if most of it gets blasted away by XANA's monsters or by William, it will still work as long as there are two separate pieces to keep the protective tendril strings together," Jeremie said.

"Okay, cool," said Ulrich. "But what happens if one of those pieces falls away or something?"

"I...'m not sure yet. The tendrils would only have one port to attach to, plus themselves, but given their polarity and thus the magnitude at which they repel each other, something which has to happen in order to properly prevent the corrosive properties of the digit—"

"Einstein, by any chance could you give us the Sparknotes version?" Odd interrupted.

"The tendrils don't like touching each other. With only one piece of the port layer, it's not likely they'd stay together well enough to protect anyone from anything in the digital sea," said Aelita. Odd shot her a grateful look.

"Great. So, let's say Aelita gets thrown into the digital sea again. She'll be perfectly safe and be able to get out without trouble?" Ulrich asked.

"Uh, not quite," Jeremie responded. "Once in the digital sea, the tendrils will only protect you for a certain amount of time and as long as you're not attacked by anything. And given the amount of space between the surface of the digital sea as we see it in Lyoko and the land forms in any of the sectors, it's not probable that you'd be able to escape on your own. One of us would have to pilot the Skid with at least one open Navskid to rescue you, and since you won't float out into the network, that'll be fairly easy."

"And how long can the shield last?" Ulrich inquired.

"According to the tests I ran, depending on the size and number of pieces that are still intact, it can range anywhere from five hours to five minutes."

"Q-E-D, if one of us falls, we gotta work fast," concluded Odd.

"Let's just cross our fingers and hope we never have to use it," murmured Jeremie.

The bell rang, and the students began walking towards the school building.

"Well at any rate, these tin-foil shield thingies aren't going to protect me from my physics test that will be eating away at my grade after today," Odd sighed.

"Maybe if you had chosen to try to understand the full version of Jeremie's program instead of asking for the Tenshields for Dummies version right away, you might have at least some basic understanding of magnetism," the pink-haired girl commented. "And besides, when did you start caring about your grade in physics?"

"The tendrils connect using one of the simplest properties of magnetism: a two-pole system. The poles have opposite charges, and..." Jeremie's voice faded as they entered the school building.

Meanwhile, during Jeremie's physics lesson to Odd, XANA was not idle. Somewhere in the ice sector, located in plain view at the end of a small ice bridge, a tower's light blue smoke turned bright red, and an ominous roar resounded throughout the sector.

There were three sounds occurring in that room. One: the gentle rhythmic tick of the clock. Two: the gentle yet non-rhythmic scratching sounds of thirteen pencils on twenty-six pieces of paper. And three: the soft rhythmic steps of Mrs. Hertz as she walked around the classroom, watching the students take their test.

After a few minutes, she stopped in front of Jeremie and Aelita's table. The two Einsteins were sitting back in their chairs, fully relaxed, pencils down next to their papers. Jeremie even had his arms folded behind his head and his eyes closed, and Aelita was just looking at the ceiling, though her eyes flitted over to the woman as she approached.

"Jeremie? Aelita? Is there something wrong?" the science teacher inquired.

"We're finished, ma'am," responded Jeremie.

"May I go the restroom?" Aelita requested. Her new coffee habit meant that this was a more frequently occurring request, and though the teachers were becoming annoyed by it, she was doing well enough in their classes that they let her go more often than not.

Mrs. Hertz was no exception. She frowned, and then nodded. "Yes, you may go, Aelita, but please return in three minutes. Class is not yet dismissed." She collected the young genius' tests, and Aelita got up and left the room.

Once her business in the stall was taken care of, she did what any person who gave even a sliver of care towards their personal hygiene would do, and washed her hands. What she didn't notice was the electrical outlet that was sparking, or the spectre that came from within it. As she dried her hands and turned to leave, she came face to face with it.

Comically, she stood there, and it stayed there, basically staring at each other until Aelita moved slightly to one side. The spectre mirrored her movement perfectly. She moved to the other side. It mirrored that too. Confused, Aelita looked behind her to the fluorescent light hanging behind her on the ceiling, and recognized that its angle made it impossible for the mirroring spectre to be her shadow.

She began turning around, simultaneously reaching for her phone to text Jeremie, but her hand never made it to her pocket, not that there was a phone in there anyway because she had left it in the classroom with her books, because at that moment, the spectre launched itself at her.

Aelita did the only thing she could do: let out an ear-piercing scream, which quickly cut off.

It had worked, though. The sound waves from what had been Aelita's one-and-a-quarter-second scream were strong enough to reach the ears of the students in the surrounding classrooms, the students and teacher in the physics classroom, and most importantly Jeremie, whose eyes flew open in horror.

"That sounded like Aelita!" Jeremie gasped out loud. He and the other students crowded at the window, where they could see Aelita already outside and running towards the park. But she looked rather comical and strange, like she was trying to pull back but still run forward. Jeremie, Odd, and Ulrich exchanged glances.

"Calm down, calm down, students!" Mrs. Hertz yelled. "Get back to your seats!"

"Mrs. Hertz, I don't think Aelita's well. I'm gonna go after," Jeremie huffed.

"We should go too. You never know if Jeremie's going to be able to catch her, what with his poor athleticism," Odd added.

"Yeah, with three of us we'll get her back faster," mustered Ulrich.

Mrs. Hertz glared and pointed at Ulrich and Odd. "You two are some of the worst students in here! You're staying to finish that test and you are not to leave the room until you do!" Her voice softened almost imperceptibly. "Jeremie, you may go since you're finished, but take Aelita to the principal's office when you _do_catch her."

"Of course, ma'am," said Jeremie as he quickly gathered both his and Aelita's belongings and ran out the room.

Aelita, meanwhile, was struggling to keep up with her running. Struggling to fight it, actually. She was having no trouble performing the running motions, and if she hadn't been fighting it, her breathing pattern might still be somewhat normal.

But no, it wasn't. And she fought hard to resist the pull of what was firmly keeping her running.

She felt a moment of ease when she stopped in front of the manhole cover, but it didn't last long as she was forced to her knees, and the tassels on her boots moved to lift and discard the cover. She was quickly forced inside, and while her body performed the motions of climbing down the ladder, he hands were free to try to hold on and stop herself.

It worked for about five seconds as she hung there, halfway down, and then she received an electrical shock which forced her to let go, falling the rest of the way down. Despite the collar of her dress which had tightened around her neck, she managed a muffled scream, which cut off as she landed and was knocked out cold.

Despite her now unconscious body, she still somehow made her way back to her feet and ran like mad through the sewers. Several minutes later she arrived at the all-too-familiar ladder, and she was shocked back into wakefulness, forced to climb the ladder, run across the bridge, swing down the rope to the elevator platform, and take the elevator down to the supercomputer room.

She was stopped just two meters from the supercomputer, and from there contorted with perfect balance and form until she was standing on her hands, which then led her to the supercomputer. As the tassels of her boots typed out coding on the keyboard, Aelita struggled to make herself fall over, but no matter how she twisted and weighted her body, her clothes were stronger, smoothly countering every move Aelita was able to make, and soon she was back on her feet, in the elevator, travelling down to the scanner room.

Nearly unconscious by this point from the blood pooling to her head while her XANA-possessed clothes had held her upside-down, Aelita collapsed in the open scanner as the spectre suddenly left her, and the doors shut around her.

She knew exactly why XANA was doing this as the transfer process began and she was virtualized in the mountain sector.

While all of this was taking place, Jeremie had run to his room, dropped everything except for his and Aelita's cell phones, confirmed that there was an activated tower, and had set off running towards the factory. With any luck, he'd catch up to Aelita on the way.

As he got to the park, he took out his cell phone and made a phone call.

In another classroom, a Japanese girl's cell phone vibrated in her hand, and she waited before the teacher had passed to press it to her ear. "Hello?" she whispered.

"Yumi! Come to the factory ASAP. There's an activated tower and I think Aelita's already been kidnapped," came Jeremie's voice.

"You're lucky I just finished the test," whispered Yumi as she hung up, scribbled down her last sentence, and threw her phone in her pocket. She ran up to the front, set down her piece of paper on the teacher's desk, and ran out before anyone else could do or say anything.

Jeremie stopped in front of the entrance to the sewers, noting the manhole cover which had been placed about two feet away from the entrance. He climbed down and replaced it above him before going the rest of the way down, picking up his scooter, and taking off towards the factory.

Yumi, meanwhile, had taken the tunnel in the gym, and had caught up to Jeremie by the time they reached the ladder leading up to the bridge.

"What's going on?" Yumi huffed.

"I'm not sure," replied Jeremie as they made their way up the ladder. "It was really weird, but after our physics exam, Aelita went to the bathroom, and then she screamed, and then we all saw her from the window running towards the park."

"So where are Ulrich and Odd?" The two of them had crossed the bridge and entered the abandoned factory. They grabbed onto the ropes and swung down to the elevator platform.

"Finishing their exam. Mrs. Hertz wouldn't let them go," Jeremie replied as he punched the access code to the elevator. Half a minute later, they were in the lab.

"She's already been virtualized, in the mountain sector. Aaaand she's already met up with the welcoming committee."

"I'm ready to go," said Yumi, getting back into the elevator.

"Strange. There's no activated tower anymore," Jeremie noticed. "I should just be able to devirtualize Aelita. Hold on, Yumi." He began typing. "Aelita? Can you hear me?" he asked into the microphone.

"Jeremie!" she cried. "Help me!"

"I'm bringing you back in!" he said as he continued to type furiously.

"Hurry!"

Yumi came back and watched Jeremie type on the screen. After a minute, he pressed the 'enter' key.

"Materialization Aelita!"

As soon as he did, however, a red spinning exclamation point appeared on the screen. "Oh, no! What's going on here?" He resumed his furious typing.

"Any time, Jeremie," called Aelita.

"There's a bug in the system. It's preventing devirtualization. We'll probably have to go to Sector Five to fix it, but I'll see what I can do from here."

"Uh, that's great, Jeremie, but I can't stand up to all these hornets and William all by myself," Aelita pointed out. William had just appeared on the scene, and he looked quite happy to see Aelita, although not in the sense of, 'Hooray my best friend is here and I shall give her a hug!'

"Send me over, Jeremie!" said Yumi, and she wasted no time in climbing down the ladder and rushing into the scanner.

"Aelita, I'm sending you Yumi. Hang in there," said Jeremie as he initiated the transfer procedures for Yumi. "Transfer: Yumi! Scanner! Virtualization!"

Yumi's virtual outline appeared midair, followed by a surface layer, followed by a third later with ten transparent ports located on her calves, the bottoms of her feet, her arms, and two on her head. When she dropped to the ground, they sprouted thin smoky tendrils and encased Yumi's surface.

"Jeremie, there's this...glue-like stuff around me. Do you know anything about that?" asked Yumi.

"Uh, yeah. That's a new shield layer I added to everyone's avatars. You weren't there when I explained it. Just make sure you keep at least two of them on you. I'll explain the rest later," Jeremie prattled. "Now go help Aelita. She's only got four left!"

"Where is she?" Yumi asked.

"Head south-south-west. Take the path to your right," Jeremie instructed as the Overwing materialized next to Yumi. She hopped on and flew off.

Aelita, meanwhile, was somehow managing to hold her own. She had figured out a clever trick of combining her energy fields with her creativity and by doing so had managed to alter the ground so that anytime William, in tangible and smoke form, would try to come within a ten-meter radius of her by ground, he would be repelled with a loss to his life points. However, the field was not impervious to the hornets, nor did it provide protection from William's sword being thrown at her. It did, however, buy her some time to fight off the hornets, which had sprayed sticky smelly green poison two meters into her circle thus limiting her mobility and also weakening her field, all while William kept playing fetch with his giant sword.

Aelita had just managed to destroy two-thirds of the hornets when William apparently got tired of his game, and just threw black smoke at Aelita, who failed to dodge it and thus became paralyzed, at the mercy of William and XANA's smoky will, and also lost two ports of her Tenshield, leaving her with only two left. William didn't seem to mind this at all, and he slammed her into the rock in such a way that the port that remained on her head was knocked off. With that, he grinned and slowly led Aelita to the edge of the plateau.

"Not so fast, Pretty Boy."

Two flying metal fans flew through the air, cutting through William and breaking his concentration, causing Aelita to fall to the ground, just inches away from the edge of the plateau. A brief glance towards the sky showed the fans returning to Yumi.

"It's not nice to throw people into the digital sea, William." Yumi threw her fans again, but William dodged. Aelita sprouted her wings and flew off, probably in search of a tower.

Meanwhile in the factory, the doors opened, revealing a pair of just slightly brain-dead boys.

"How's Aelita?" Ulrich inquired.

"She's doing okay at the moment. Yumi just stopped William from throwing her into the digital sea, but now they have to face William," responded Jeremie.

"Well then let's go help," said Odd.

"I've got to warn you. The devirtualization process is all bugged. I'm working on it, but until I fix it and as long as you're there, I can't guarantee you a one-way ticket back to the scanner."

"That's our problem, Jeremie. We'll be careful," said Odd, and he hit the button which closed the doors to the elevator and took them down to the scanner room.

In the short lull during which Jeremie had been speaking with Ulrich and Odd, XANA had called up his cavalry: tarantulas. The Overwing had been dematerialized, Aelita had been shot down by a stray hornet, and Yumi was taking a serious beating from William and the tarantulas.

"I stop for thirty seconds to talk to Odd and Ulrich, and looks what happens," Jeremie grunted from somewhere above.

"Are they on their way at least?" asked Yumi, back-flipping away from a barrage of lasers.

"Are we on our way? Of course we are!" Odd's voice entered the scene, and a second later, Odd's laser arrow pierced the tarantula, and Ulrich's sabre was thrown at William, who dodged and smoked off.

At the same time, one of the lasers hit Yumi, causing her to go tumbling off the path. She let out a scream.

"Yumi!" Ulrich's cry rang throughout the air as he realized what was happening, and he ran to the edge of the cliff. There was Yumi hanging there by her fingertips. "Gotcha." He quickly reached down and grabbed her arm, and hoisted her back up onto the plateau.

"Thanks, Ulrich," breathed Yumi.

"Good job on saving Yumi, Ulrich," said Jeremie's voice. "But now William's almost caught up to Aelita. Hurry!"

"Okay. I'll take care of the last tarantula here while you two," Odd motioned towards Ulrich and Yumi, "go and save Aelita. I'll catch up to you when I'm done."

"Sir yes sir!" said Ulrich. Yumi just nodded.

"Here are your vehicles," said Jeremie as the three vehicles materialized next to them. Yumi and Ulrich hopped onto theirs and rode off.

Odd crouched down to the ground and aimed for the tarantula. The tarantula did likewise, and Odd was forced to temporarily become an acrobat as he dodged its lasers. Soon enough, Odd spotted his chance. He leaped in, flew over the tarantula, and landed three arrows directly in its head, causing it to combust as Odd landed. He wiped his hands non-chalantly and hopped on the Overboard and flew off.

During this, William had caught up to Aelita, who had all but made it to the way tower. A well-aimed throw of black smoke dismembered her wings, causing her to tumble back to the ground. She hastily got up and tried to run for it, but she wasn't fast enough, and William paralyzed her again with more of his black smoke. It lifted her from the ground and caused her to fly out of the cavern the tower was located in.

And straight into the waiting clutches of Ulrich and Yumi.

Yumi threw her fans at William again, who transformed back into smoke to avoid the assault. He quickly wound his way around to behind the Lyoko warriors, and with a quick slash of the giant sword, the Overwing and Overbike were history once again. Ulrich tried to stab William in the instant he had solidified to destroy the vehicles, but William was faster. A second later, he was back in front of them, blocking their way to the tower.

"You guys are really starting to get on my nerves," William growled as his sword materialized in his hands and he slow began walking forward.

Approaching from a distance, Odd saw what was happening, and schemed to approach from the back side. Perhaps William wouldn't see him and he'd be able to finally alleviate their problems so they could go back to school and sleep. He flew underneath the path and flew around the backside of the cavern of the tower, but was met by four hornets, and a speedy devirtualization.

"Yes! I did it! I fixed the devirtualization program!" Jeremie's voice echoed at the exact same time.

Aelita heard him, and turned around. "Quickly! Devirtualize me!"

"But what about the tower?" asked Ulrich.

"There is no tower. XANA deactivated it as soon as I was on Lyoko. Do it now!"

Ulrich nodded and quickly plunged his sword through Aelita's midriff just as William entered range to knock her aside with his broadsword.

His eyebrows lowered ominously, his glare darkened, and he suddenly lashed out at Ulrich. One forward swipe of his blade was reflected by Ulrich's twin sabres. His back slash hit Yumi before she could react, and she was knocked off and away from the path.

"Yumi!" Ulrich turned in horror as he saw her body flying through thin air and start plunging down. As if in slow motion, he took one of his swords and threw it in her direction. At the exact same moment, he was devirtualized by William.

The sabre, somehow still intact after its owner had disappeared, flew towards Yumi, spinning. It missed.

A bright blast of light rays erupted from the digital sea at the very place her body penetrated the surface.

Back in the lab, Ulrich stumbled out of the scanner, and then climbed the ladder with sudden haste.

"Did I make it?" he asked as he forced his way past Aelita, who was still clutching at her stomach, and Odd, to see the computer screen.

"No," said Jeremie.

"What about the tin-foil hats you programmed? How many of those port things did she still have?" asked Odd, hopeful.

"Hey, you're right, Odd," said Ulrich. "Jeremie, you said we were okay if we still had at least two of things, right? How many did Yumi have?"

Jeremie was quiet for a moment. Then his quiet voice filled their ears with the verdict.


End file.
